FAMILY STRIKES GOLD IN VET’S OLD UNIFORM
By John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News

Rocky Mountain News, CO
Nov 12 2007

Surprise discovery solves mystery of missing heirlooms

A big chunk of Michael Brown’s family history arrived in a UPS box
last month at his Greeley home.

He had no idea how big.

Inside the box was a U.S. Air Force uniform, blue and crisp as the
last day that Brown’s late uncle, John Kludjian, had worn it during
the Korean War as a sergeant in the Strategic Air Command.

The uniform came in a thin plastic cover from the dry cleaners. Stacy
Brown, Michael’s wife, tore the plastic off and spread the uniform
over their bed.

She felt a slight lump in the breast pocket.

Gently unclasping the pin the dry cleaner had affixed to the pocket
flap, she reached inside.

Out came a small gray felt bag. She opened it. Out came a wad of
tissue paper. She unrolled it.

"Just one thing after another started falling out of this tissue
paper," Brown said. "First, there was this 14-carat gold necklace.

Then there was this tennis bracelet. Then this gold broach with
rubies. And there was this huge diamond ring."

Brown got on the phone and called her husband.

He told her his Auntie Mary said there would be some cuff links
and things.

"I don’t think this is something your Auntie Mary was planning on,"
she replied.

It wasn’t. When Michael Brown called his aunt in Haverford Township,
Pa., she almost screamed into the phone.

"Oh my goodness," Mary Kludjian recalled this week. "I was so
surprised, I couldn’t believe it."

She recognized every bit of jewelry as a collection of family heirlooms
that had been missing for 15 years.

And amid the jewels, the most important family heirloom was still
intact: about 18 inches of gold necklace attached to the ruby broach.

Back in 1915, Mary Kludjian’s family had fled their homeland to escape
the Armenian Genocide, during which 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians
were killed by the Ottoman Turks.

In their exile, her relatives carried with them a spool of gold,
which they bartered bit by bit for food and survival.

When they finally reached safety in the United States, all that
was left of the gold was the 18 inches that now spilled out of John
Kludjian’s uniform pocket.

"It was important to me, but I’d given up on it," Mary Kludjian said.

The gold necklace and other valuables vanished one day when she and
her husband were getting ready to visit relatives in Las Vegas.

Mary Kludjian had forgotten to put the jewels in the safe deposit box,
so her husband John went back into the house and put them someplace
for safe keeping.

When she went looking for them about a week after their trip, he
couldn’t remember where he put them.

"We turned the house upside down," she said.

Nothing.

About eight years later, her husband died at the age of 70. Again,
they tossed the house. Again, nothing.

A few months ago, Michael’s mother called to ask if he would be
interested in having his Uncle John’s old uniform.

"It meant a lot to him," she said, because he was very proud of
his service.

Brown said he would be happy to have it.

By coincidence, another relative was visiting Colorado a few days
after the jewels were discovered. She returned them to Mary Kludjian.

As for the Browns, they plan to put the uniform in a shadowbox,
along with some of John Kludjian’s medals.

Michael Brown said he wonders what would have happened to his family
if it weren’t for that gold thread and if he hadn’t accepted the gift
of his uncle’s uniform.

"It’s almost as if this was all meant to be," he said.

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